How to add a line to column chart? [Charting trick]

Let’s say you work in super hero factory as floor manager. You are looking at the recent time sheet data submitted by your underlings and want to know who works more. So you did what any self respecting floor manager does. You made yourself a large cup of hot chocolate, whipped open Excel and created a column chart.

But now, you want to add a line to it at 6:00 PM (or some other arbitrary point) so you can clearly see which superheros are over working.

So how do you go about it?

Adding a line to column charts – Tutorial

This tutorial assumes you have a column chart. If you have a bar chart, you should use vertical error bars in step 6.

In a cell, enter the value for your line. Say this is in C15 (and it has 6:00 PM)

Add this extra point to your chart. At this stage you will get this.

Take a sip of that scrumpdillycious hot chocolate.

Convert the new series to as XY chart. Just right click on it and select “Change series chart type”.

Add error bars to this new dot

Excel adds both vertical & horizontal bars. We just need horizontal line. So remove vertical (Y) error bars.Note: if you are adding the line to bar chart, remove X error bars instead.

Set error bar value to 7 (same as number of categories – 1)

Format the error bar

Set error bar to plus side only

Remove cap

Set the line color and thickness

Remove marker symbol (set it to no marker) so we have only line

Chug the rest of your hot chocolate, we are done!

Video tutorial – How to add a line to column chart

Watch this quick video tutorial on how to add a line to column chart to understand this process better.

As I mentioned in the video, there are many ways to do this. I believe, I have covered the third series technique in a previous video or post. So I wanted to showcase the error bar technique. Also, the line chart method won't work with bar charts (as lines need different X/ category values). Hope that helps.

To avoid the need to repeat the target time for every person and still end up with a line that runs all the way across the chart, follow these steps. Note: this line will truly extend all the way across the chart instead of stopping in the middle of the first and last categories as happens with Chandoo's example.

Plot/move the new series to the secondary axes.

Turn off the secondary vertical, leaving the secondary horizontal turned on but not shown (all display elements set to None) and with the setting to "Position Axis: On tick marks."

From the Select Data dialog, enter the series (y) values for the line as =(SheetName!$C$15,SheetName!$C$15) or simply click that cell twice using the Ctrl key. Including the parentheses is important in allowing you to repeat the cell address.

It will not be necessary to enter anything for the category (x) values.